Byron’s House Party – from A COUNTRY HOUSE COMPANION

“The most flamboyant and notorious of the major Romantics, George Gordon, Lord Byron, was likewise the most fashionable poet of the day.“–THE POETRY FOUNDATION

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I lost a whole day rediscovering with delight a wonderful, funny and revealing book on the British aristocracy. Downton Abbey pales next to this amazing expose’ of the high times at the grand country estates in England, a tradition for over five hundred years.

Why? I am in the throes of trying to slim down my “library,”I have books coming out my ears, falling out my windows and sometimes find one of my dogs running off with one in his mouth he’s discovered under my bed, in the creases of the sofa or behind the dryer in the laundry room (my dogs are not readers, but they love pictures and my scent soaked through the pages and bindings, and they will sometimes…

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